Education for Living Creatively and Peacefully

By Devi Prasad; Otherwise Books: Hyderabad, Rs.175

SUNIL BATRA The Hindu Literary Review Sunday, Mar 05, 2006

In the bewildering world of educational jargon and school practice, once in a while there emerges a fresh perspective that inspires teachers, parents and theorists to confront quintessential questions related to education and life. For many parents, school education implies pressures of admission, reams of homework, examinations, report cards and tough competition. For children it often implies disinterest in learning, excuses, running away from the ubiquitous tests, cheating and increasing contempt for fellow beings (barring the handful few close friends).

It is hard for many people to make connections between the materialistic world we are living in today, education and growing incidents of violence, hate and tolerance. It is hard also for people to imagine that appropriate education can help children and adults find non-violent ways of being with themselves and each other. In a compelling collection of essays written over a span of several years of intense work with the self, creative forms, people and nature, Devi Prasad helps readers make clear connections between art, relationships, pedagogy and peace. Otherwise Books, a Hyderabad-based imprint of Spark-India recently published Education for Living Creatively and Peacefully by Devi Prasad.

An artist, a teacher and a peace activist, Prasad makes clear arguments to replace our existing system of education with a more humane and sensitive culture. His essays suggest answers to the fundamental questions he asks at the beginning of the book: "What kind of adults will the children of today become with the education that they are currently receiving? What should be the essential elements of education?" In his formative years, Prasad chose to live and work with Rabindranath Tagore in Santiniketan and later in Gandhi Ashram in Sevagram where he worked on child art and education.

After publishing several works related to peace education, Prasad helped make the vital connection between art and the inner creative being of young learners in his book titled, Art: the Basis of Education. Prasad draws upon insights from the lives of Tagore and Gandhi to make suggestions about the choices that we need to make as a society and as individuals. In almost all the stories he reminds us of the need to develop thought in young people, not that which makes them conform but that which makes them question their roles in daily life. Thinking that encourages questioning, he says, can only emerge with a certain predisposition to understanding the self and the role of the self in the context of the community, humanity and Nature.

Education for Living Creatively and Peacefully is not a prescriptive book. It does not provide any mantras on how to make children or schools creative. Readings from the book can make many teachers think afresh about their most significant contributions for their children. It can undoubtedly provide an element of depth in teacher-training programmes that otherwise tend to remain preoccupied with hackneyed teaching methods, syllabi completion and testing. Prasad's book makes the reader think about the world we have created so far and the world that children inherently desire when they seek to grow in harmony with nature. It makes the reader think about the causes of decay in society. It urges us to make choices that will encourage us to understand freedom with responsibility, to be better prepared to choose peace over war and to live in harmony with ourselves and Nature. The writer is a Child Psychologist and School Development Facilitator. He is also Director, Education, at Shikshantar, a unitech school for learning located in Gurgaon.